Atonement: that marathon shot on the beach.

[Brad Grimmett]

"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. "

If I may go WAY off topic and add the proper ending...."and he pulled out the Lisigav and I said ye.....what the hell is that?"

 

Back on topic. I'm trying to decide how I feel about this shot. I LOVE the effort. And I love that they had the balls to even attempt a shot of this magnitude, but I'm not sure exactly how I feel about it. I guess I'm a bit ambivalent about it at the moment. I think seeing the whole film and the shot in context would be a big help in this instance. What I fear is that my ambivalence may just mean that, in context or not, I don't love or hate this shot, which probably means it doesn't have the weight it was intended to have.

[AdamKeith]

There is a great article in American Cinematographer December 2007 issue about Atonement and the "Steadicam Shot" It is titled Irretrievable Deeds. You might be able to read it online.

 

 

The article explains how the shot was rehearsed and shot over 2 days. It goes into detail on how they handled the reflecton from the sand and 1000 extras, ect. The operator according to the article started out on a vehicle, walked the sand, up ramps into a rickshaw.

 

Also why they staged a long Steadicam tracking shot was explained

 

"Our concern became how to choreograph the move and make it evolve in a way that would be interesting for the audience while communicating the chaos and the waste of war. At the same time we wanted to stay with Robbie and maintain the sort of subjectivity and dreamscape atmosphere this section of the story had so far"

 

A great read

 

Regards,

Adam Keith

[montaser shakeeb]

i wached th whol movie and in this amazing shot i felt the war , and how do they live like am in the middel of them , but i was wondering about this briliant operator how could he shot this distance without loosing the balance , he must be a hero ....

anybody form u boys could do such a shot like this ?

cheers

[mattmarek]

montaser,

it was mentioned a few times in this thread that the operator did not walk the entire shot. he used and ATV/golf cart? and a rickshaw.

 

the shot works very well in my opinion. maybe could have used a gyro or two...seemed to be fighting some wind at some points.

[Eric Fletcher S.O.C.]

i wached th whol movie and in this amazing shot i felt the war , and how do they live like am in the middel of them , but i was wondering about this briliant operator how could he shot this distance without loosing the balance , he must be a hero ....

anybody form u boys could do such a shot like this ?

cheers

 

 

It's what we all make a living at. Quite a few of us could have done that shot, and we wouldn't "lose the balance"....

 

You might want to read the archives and see what's been talked about and who is here.

[Mike McGowan SOC]

It's certainly an epic shot.

 

I have no doubt it was difficult to accomplish.

 

That being said, I agree with Eric. I've been verbally abused by DP's for much smaller "balance loss".

 

I wonder how much time they had to do that shot. How many takes, how much rehearsal, et.

[Kevin Packer]

In AC they say there were two shooting days. The first day and a half was all rehearsal until the sun hit its mark in the late afternoon. They got three good takes and on the fourth one the light got really bad and it was abandoned. They went with take three.

Sounds really tight time wise for such a big shot.

Considering this I think it's very well done.

[Juan M.Ramos SOC]

Sorry but when I wacht a shot like this and my mind start to think in my back means that something is wrong with the story,I don`t really like the free long shots.It`s not my intention to offense somebody but I`m not agree with a Kind of muscle demostration or very complicate shots if they are not clean.It is difficult for me to explain in english but some directors want to show how inteligent they are and some times they loss the narrative form.A hugh shot it is always a good shot.

I like the new way of use the steadicam as tool,editing and building a sequence with many steadishots like Cameron did.I admire the work of this shots but I have to say that I don`t like it.

All the best.

 

 

PS:I`m agree with Eric...please,first,read about us,IMDB is for something.And sorry for my english.

[Peter Hoare]

I was on a shoot the other week and the sound man (Mike Palmer, nice guy) told me his uncle was the operator for this long shot. I wonder if I could get some work experience with him :-D

[David Steel]

I haven't seen the movie yet, and dont have the experience to talk about the technicals. all though the way i saw it was like my eyes were the camera, and your following the three characters reactions then having a little exploration in the middle then go back to following. So i found it quite interesting.

 

David

[David Williams]

I just watched this on DVD last week. I wasn't aware of this shot before watching it, so I wasn't expecting it. It really broke the mood of the film for me, it felt so out of place. Being Australian, perhaps I have more of an affinity to traditional style British cinema which this film has many elements of. I was really enjoying the story and not paying much attention to analysing the technical aspects, when suddenly came this Gone With The Wind epic shot. It jolted me right out of the film, it did not fit in any way for me. Stylistically it didn't fit, and story wise it made no sense. The narrative was tightly bound to three characters interactions, and that shot served only to distract me from the story.

[chris fawcett]

Hi David,

 

Well put.

 

All the best,

 

Chris

[Louis Puli SOC]

Hi everyone

After seeing Atonement I emailed Peter Robertson about the background to the shot and this was his reply.ENJOY.

Louis Puli from down under .

 

OPERATING THE ?ATONEMENT? STEADICAM SHOT

 

Background

 

The one-take Steadicam Dunkirk shot in Atonement may well prove to be the emblematic scene that the film will be remembered for. However, this was only one of a series of carefully crafted sequences that we, as a camera department with myself as the main camera operator, were asked to create in response to Joe Wright?s powerful and uncompromising vision.

 

Nevertheless, this was certainly the toughest shot to achieve, physically and logistically, coming in the last week of a long shoot and at the end of a day when we rehearsed many times with and without camera. The concentration levels needed to remember every beat, twist and turn of the shot, where to follow the actors movements, when to remember a step or obstacle whilst holding the shot composition compounded the physical demands of carrying a heavy camera.

 

When Joe (Wright) and Seamus (McGarvey) first approached me with the idea of shooting the Dunkirk scene as a one-take Steadicam move I knew that it would take every ounce of my technical and physical Steadicam nouse from the past twenty years of operating to achieve. There would be no plan B to fall back on, with no wiping off and on the backs of background actors or objects to create edit points should a take prove imperfect.

 

Born partially out of financial necessity ? I believe there was only enough money in the budget for 1,300 extras for one or two days ? it was, nevertheless, a daring piece of filmmaking that challenged the gods. It was conceived to place the audience physically and emotionally inside the nightmarish vision of Dunkirk.

 

The scene tells the story of Robbie Turner played by James McAvoy attempting to return to his love Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) from the doomed beaches of Dunkirk. He is dying and engulfed by the living hell of one of World War II?s most tragic episodes. It is essentially Robbie?s nightmare that the camera describes, restlessly moving around a scene, sometimes bizarre (soldiers skinny dipping), sometimes macabre (cavalry horses being shot) and sometimes painfully moving (a choir singing on a bandstand). The uninterrupted flow of images drift in front of our eyes like a hallucination from a Bosch painting or, in the case of the dying horses, like the contorted images from Picasso?s Guernica. The shot, unedited, has the power of a real nightmare with its bizarre associations. We sense that these events are all happening in the same physical space that we travel through as an engaged audience, not as a series of juxtaposed and montaged images that we view as outsiders. The camera not only shows the desperation and pain felt by the dying Robbie as he begins to realise that he may never see his love again but also the plight of a huge mass of stranded soldiers who desperately seek to return to their lives and loves. As such, the scene transcends the simple story of one individual?s tale of lost love and evokes the sentiments of a great anti-war statement.

 

Technicalities

 

We shot Atonement on the Panavision system in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, using the Panaflex XL on the Steadicam with Primo lenses. However, the Dunkirk sequence itself posed many extra problems for us in the camera department. Whichever way the shot was timed on recces it always came to just under five minutes, ruling out the use of a conventional 400ft magazine. Our excellent 1st AC, Carlos de Carvahlo, pointed out that we could use a Panavision 500ft magazine, which had originally been produced for hand holding the earlier Panavision GII camera. Whilst heavier than a modern lightweight 400ft magazine, it was still preferable to a 1,000ft magazine, which was inconceivable on a shot like this. The extra 100ft gave us the time length we needed for the shot.

 

Framing and composition posed a few problems too. The shot demanded a wider framing for the architecture of the set at certain times and a closer framing on faces that would loom into the lens at others. Again, we ignored convention and opted for the Panavision 17.5-34mm short zoom, which by remoting its function gave Seamus the option to zoom in shot. This lens gave us the optical range to see the set in all its glory without distorting the faces too much at close quarters. Seamus and I choreographed these zooms at moments in the shot when the natural movement of the Steadicam disguised them to the viewer?s eye.

 

These decisions all had a bearing on the final configuration and weight of the Steadicam. By remoting all of the lens and camera functions it meant that I was carrying three motors (focus, iris and zoom) as well as the extra weight of the magazine. Add to this two video transmitters, one to the director?s monitor and one to Seamus who needed a picture to gauge his zoom and iris pulls and you have an overall payload that weighed more than a standard airline baggage allowance.

 

The next problem was how to fly this around the beach with weightless elegance, covering close to quarter of a mile in the process and achieving the precision framing that the director demanded. It was not possible without a swift course of steroids and a metal spine implant to attempt the whole shot on foot. It was obvious that at certain times I would have to ride on a vehicle to cover the ground at speed and keep up with the action. I chose to ride a ?mule? provided by Bickers Action Vehicles. This is a small open-backed vehicle with a rear-facing platform, much like a golf cart. A low step was rigged so that I could slide off the back when I needed to continue the shot on foot. I used this for the first part of the shot when the three main characters are striding along the beach past the horses being shot. The step off the ?mule? comes at the rear of the beached Thames barge, where a pause was built into the action to help disguise the step-off.

 

The shot continued, on foot, up the beach, onto the promenade and around the bandstand. After the bandstand I stepped down via a ramp, cunningly disguised by the art department as a pile of bomb debris and sat back onto a rickshaw rig, expertly gripped by Gary Hutchings and Dean Morris. This was then steered backwards through the chaotic scenes of soldiers riding a merry-go-round and disabling heavy artillery to the beginning of the pier. Here, with the help of a line of carefully placed soldiers filing past camera to once again disguise my step-off, I travelled, on foot, for the final part of the shot up some steps and past a line of soldiers to look back on the mayhem of Dunkirk.

 

I hope this demonstrates how the whole shot was planned and executed like a military operation in itself and stands, as often these endeavours do, as a testament to the great teamwork it took to achieve. Forget Dunkirk, if I hadn?t had the support of such a brilliant crew the sequence would have been the movie?s Waterloo.

 

Myth and Legend

 

The final take used in the movie was Take 3. We attempted a fourth but my timing was off and I missed my footing on the steps leading up to the bandstand. In a shot such as this, once the camera stops dead the shot is pretty much unusable. I realised, having given my all in the rehearsals (two of which were completed fully loaded with the camera) and three previous takes that I didn?t have enough juice in the tank to complete a fifth. It felt like I had just performed a ten-hour gym session and, in hindsight, I consider myself lucky to have even completed three takes. Much has been publicised in print about how the Steadicam operator ?collapsed? or even ?fell over? which was claimed in some reports. All slightly melodramatic representations of what actually happened but I suppose that every movie needs its myth and legend.

 

The beach Steadicam team were:

Joe Wright Director

Josh Robertson 1st AD

Seamus McGarvey, BSC Director of Photography

Peter Robertson, GBCT Steadicam / A Camera Operator

Carlos de Carvalho, GBCT A Camera 1st Assistant Camera

Jennie Paddon A Camera 2nd Assistant Camera

Rawdon Hayne B Camera 1st Assistant Camera

Iain Mackay B Camera 2nd Assistant Camera

Gary Hutchings, GBCT Key Grip

Dean Morris Grip

Chris Macaleese Camera Trainee

Simon Thorpe Grip Trainee

Nick Kenealy Video Assist

Clive Bickers ?Mule?

[Lars Erik]

I would like to thank Louis and specially mr. Peter Robertson for taking the time and writing this to the forum. Very exciting reading!

 

LE